Verbal Spark!

So we all know by now that Jesus has not returned and chances never will since the legendary Jesus was NEVER here in the first place (maybe some smelly first century itinerant preacher, yes, but not THE SON OF GOD). Anyway, the apologist will tell you, “Oh Jesus has not returned yet because God is not willing that any should perish.” Um…have they checked the stats lately based on their own belief system. Zillions upon zillions of people have gone to hell (if they answer you in light of their beliefs) since those words were written by some dude calling himself II Peter.

So God still has the leash on Jesus because he is not willing that any should perish yet buttloads of people are persishing daily “without Jesus in their hearts.”

Like I said before in the past, the writer of II Peter was the first Christian spin doctor. Folks were obviously already asking “where is this promised return you Christians have been speaking about. (II Peter 3:4) After all, in your first book, Mr. II Peter, you said that we were living in the “last times.” Yes, don’t act stupid. You said it right here in I Peter 1:20. So where’s this white blue eyed guy in the white dress?” Well like a good Christian, good ole Pete decided to come up with an ingenuous answer. “Well folks, one day is really like a thousand years to God and a thousand years is like one day, and besides, God is not willing that any of you schmuks should perish so he is delaying Jesus’ return. Yeah I know a bunch of folks died in the Vesuvius eruption and another million or more in the Roman invasion and the Romans are busy walking all over the Mediterranean killing people, but who’s counting?”

I have been placed under pressure to explain why I do not believe in God. The people who ask this  question are most often people who have the biblical god in mind. For kicks I usually ask them, “which god?”  Of course they mean the god they believe in or at least respect as an existing entity and he is, the god mentioned in the Bible. They are not terribly concerned with the idea that history has thousands of gods, even millions, running about the place in people’s imaginations. All they know is that they don’t believe in those gods, but are curious why I don’t believe in theirs. I can just imagine a Hindu asking them why they don’t believe in Brahma or  an ancient Egyptian asking them why they do not worship Ptah. Their reply would most likely be the same one I give to them - I don’t believe they exist.

Anyway, like many people from my end of the world, the Caribbean, I grew up with the belief that God existed and the Bible in one fashion or another is related to him. In addition, I grew up believing he had a son by the name of Jesus and this Jesus came to earth to die for the sins of mankind AND resurrected to heaven and will someday return to exile unbelievers to hell or some everlasting separation and promote the righteous believers to eternal bliss. My impressionable mind did not come with a belief system in place. All that I came to know about a deity came from being taught about one. I just happened to be born into a region where the Christian god held sway in the popular belief.

Growing up, I did not have any doubts such a god existed. My grandmother (in St. Kitts) took me to church, a Catholic church. In the evenings she sent me with neighbors to a local Pentecostal style church. The idea of God was drilled into my head, a constant reinforcement. I also grew up during a time when the Christian influence on the society around me was very strong. People did not dare play any secular music on Sunday and it was important to be in church. In my grandmother’s house, the radio stayed on Gospel programming 24 hours a day. We had no television at that time so ALL information I knew about the world was filtered through a Christian belief. I knew nothing else. As early as age 4 I was already reading the Bible and grew to know the stories it contained very well. I had a mind for adventure and the Bible contained more than enough for it to excite me to read it.

I moved to New  York City at age 8 to live with my dad and while my father held Christian beliefs, he did not go to church, but he sent me and my brother to church with some neighbors. Again, the whole Christian concept continued to be reinforced in my mind. There was something a little different though. Unlike living a little small Caribbean town where everybody practically believed the same thing, I now lived in a large metropolitan city where all kinds of people had all kinds of different beliefs. The god I believed in was just another god amongst many others that other people believed in. Naturally I believed my god was the true god and all the others were false, but I was too young to understand that to the fullest.

Ont thing in school that interested me was Greek and Roman mythology, stories from well over 2,000 years ago, stories that preceded the Christian era. I took a very deep interest on these stories and I could not help but notice how some of them seemed to resemble stories I had read in the Bible. I did not put too much thought into it at the time, but it would come back to play a role later in my life.

I moved to my birthplace of St. Thomas, Virgin Islands when I was 12. Two years later I was invited to church and as they would say, “gave my life to Jesus.” Being that for the first 11 years of my life I was already groomed in the Christian faith, I went into this new life running. I was already a voracious reader so I read my Bible religiously. I would win all and any bible contest. I memorized whole passages. I actually read all the boring chapters, memorized the names of even the most remote Bible names. By the time I was 17 I had read through the Bible two times already.

The church I was going to, however, was a rather strict church. Women were not allowed to wear pants (even at home), wear makeup or jewelry. We were not allowed to listen to secular music as it was not edifying. It made most of us very judgmental and hypocritical. We even looked at other Christians who wore jewelry and makeup and questioned their faith.

At 17 I moved back to New York to further my education after graduating High School. Now having a job, I was able to buy even more books. I invested in study bibles, bible concordances, bible dictionaries and lexicons. I bought all kinds of books on biblical apologetics, books on how to defend the Christian faith. I bought books that answered all critics. I was constantly reading and constantly studying. I even taught myself some Greek and Hebrew to understand the Bible better.

During my studies, I would come across some disturbing things in the Bible, however, I just brushed them aside figuring God knew what he was doing or that there was some explanation which God would explain someday. I would read through the mid early Old Testament and read about all kinds of atrocities committed in the name of God. I would read where God [allegedly] endorsing slavery and murder and the invasion of other people’s property, even ordering his people (Israel) to take slaves and/or make slaves of other people. My explanation was that such people were evil and God was simply punishing them by having them killed or enslaved. I reasoned that because God created all life, he could do whatever he wanted with anyone even if it seemed evil or unfair to me. End of story.

By this time I was attending a different church. This church was not legalistic. The folks were more genuine and in a big city like New York, rather accommodating to people I would once thought should not even be in church. I found my happy place. I was serving God and feeling comfortable in church.

Moved to Florida after 4 years. Eventually found a church similar to the one I left in New York City. At this point I was at the height of my Christian experience. Had the whole thing down to a science. Was very happy. Then the wheels started to come off.

I received word from New York that my best friends lost their mother. While contemplating something to send for them to express my condolences, I began to re-read the book of Job because that book deals with the suffering of the righteous. As I started to read it, I noticed something rather troubling that I never noticed before. All my life I was told the book of Job was a book that held up Job as a blazing example of faithfulness to God in the midst of tremendous suffering and one that showed how good God was. What I never paid attention to was how the whole saga began. Satan appeared before God and actually was having a conversation with him. That alone bothered me because I always thought that Satan had no place in the presence of God, yet, there he was. The next thing was that God was the one who drew Satan’s attention to Job and when Satan made the claim he could turn Job away from God, God, his ego getting the best of him,  gave Satan permission to go torment Job in every and any way but not kill him in the process. Satan then goes off and abuses Job, even killed Job’s children and reduced Job to sores, boils and bad body odor and took away everything he had. Job stays faithful to God, God rebukes him when he questions him and in the end allows him to recover an blesses him as a result.

Now, despite the happy ending, the start of the story just would not leave me. What I got from it was that God and Satan essentially made a bet with their egos on the line. Job was used as the hopeless bum to prove a point. If I or any other father did such a thing with our children, we would be tossed in jail and reviled by society as sick bastards, but God is praised ad Job is seen as an example of strong faith. It made absolutely no sense to me, still I hung on despite these doubts.

I began to re-read the Bible again, but by now I had a pretty good understanding of world religions and religious history. I realized the Old Testament was not put together until at least thousands of years AFTER the early events it described. In other words, it was later Jews who complied and edited it. Why is this important to know? A story told days, weeks, months or centuries later allows later editors to retell it which means they can add or delete to suit their bias at the time. This is precisely what happened in the Old Testament. I also noticed that some of the things I read in the Bible, I read similar stories in cultures that came before the people who actually gave us the Bible. Long before the Jews had a story about Noah or a creation story, the Sumerians and Babylonians did and the Jewish version appeared to have borrowed from those earlier peoples to pattern their own story.

Then I read about the Persians (modern Iranians) who ruled over the Jews 600 years before the time of Christ. I realized they had a complex religion and that the Jews borrowed heavily from them to form the basis for some of their own religious concepts.  Those Jews then passed them down through the centuries until we get to the time of Christ. His followers, Jews, then passed it on to the large Gentile community around the Mediterranean Sea, from Egypt to Rome. In other words, the “Christian” story nor the God of the Bible was nothing more than a rehashed, regurgitated old story passed down through the ages from one people to another. With a stroke of luck, Christianity met good fortune when the Roman Emperor, Constantine, adopted it as the official religion of the greatest empire of the time. From as far east as modern day Iraq, to as far south as Egypt and as far west as modern day England and France, Christianity became the religion of the vast Roman Empire of which all of those regions and points between were a part of.

1,000 years later, other empires rose up within the remnants of the old Roman Empire,  empires like  England, Portugal, France and Spain. These Empires then sent conquerors and settlers over the high seas to conquer and spread the Christian story. They eventually made it to Africa and taught it there as well as rape that continent and kidnap it inhabitants. Many of those people are our ancestors who were taught the Christian faith by the very people using it to oppress them. After 400 years we are still a people enslaved to the religion of those oppressors.

This testimony was a very condensed version to try to keep it within a readable format. If you look around the blog you will find topics I discuss on their own that will help to prove why I do not and cannot believe in the Bible and its god. Please feel free to read them.

They tell me I was just six months old when I went to live with her on the island of St. Kitts. My dad’s mom became the first “mother” I really ever knew. Times were hard in those days. I was born on the island of St. Thomas, but things never worked out between my mom and dad and while she stayed in St Thomas, my dad moved to New York City. Neither one had the finances or space to really take care of me, both in their early 20’s so it was decided that I should be sent to St. Kitts and be raised there. My mom’s mother was a mere few miles away on the island of Nevis, but she was already caring for my mother’s other [older] son and things were hard there too

My earliest recollections of her was that she was a very strict woman. As a child, it never occurred to me she was a “white” woman whom later in my life I found out was the child of a Portuguese immigrant to the island of St. Kitts who carried the name of his Portuguese home district of Gouveia as the Portuguese and Spaniards were prone to do. That name was mangled in St. Kitts and became Deguire.

I was a very disgusting child, one who had a hard time listening to her instructions. After all, I was the only child in the house so it was difficult to dream up or new and exciting things to do with myself each day so the street always beckoned my name. Each day, knowing the risk I was taking with her, I would dig a hole under the barb wire fence that surrounded our modest home and relish the green grass of freedom. Off I would go to play with the kids in the neighborhood until my joy would be tempered with the clarion call of a familiar voice - my grandmother’s. She would stand in the middle of the street and call out my name. Knowing I would get my ass torn up right there in the middle of Molineaux Site, St. Kitts, I would run through neighboring yards and then climb back under the fence and pretend I was somewhere in the yard all along. Of course that never worked so I got a beating everyday.

Don’t know what it is about West Indian grandmothers though. My grandmother actually had an invisible line of demarcation in her house I was not to cross. It separated the kitchen from the small living room area. I can remember there sat this glass wall unit. As a little kid it seemed like it was 100 feet tall and it was filled with china and pictures and on the top shelf was a toy rocket ship my mom sent for me For some odd reason momma thought I was too young to play with it or not deserving enough to play with it. For years I would stand behind that invisible line and watch it and never cross it to meddle with it. I would have taken my life into my hands if I ever crossed that line. In recent years I have gone back to St. Kitts and the 5 foot unit that I tower over today still sits there, but my spaceship is no longer inside. No one knows whatever happened to it.

Like just about any West Indian grandmother in those days, she raised me in church. Back in those days we had no television so I was few a steady daily diet of Gospel radio, most of the programming beamed in from the southern United States. For those first 8 years of my life I was thoroughly indoctrinated with Christian doctrine as her radio stayed on Gospel programming day and night. Obviously from reading around my blogs I’ve since gone pass those little fantasies I once held.

Despite it all, I would never trade my childhood with her. It was country life, a simple life. Beautiful starry nights with moonlight glistening on the Caribbean Sea. Hikes into the hills nearby or down in the water gullies with my uncles. I recall going into the fields with her to pick peas or dig for potatoes and sitting at the edge of a nearby canefield under a tree scratching dandruff out of her jet black wavy hair. She really loved that. She also made a wicked cup of tea, something I had every night before I went to bed. I do also recall a few times she nursed me back from near death with things like the whooping cough. I’m sure there were other moments I was to young to remember. Needless to say, I owe who I am today to her in great part.

Was sad to see her pain in 1994 when her youngest son was violently killed in a hail of gunfire while doing his job as a leading police investigator. The story made international news because of the man behind the hit who happened to be  an FBI’s Most Wanted. He was an uncle who helped her to raise me. My first child, a son, I named after him. Then she lost her oldest son to cancer a few years later. Sad thing was, from that time forward she steadily began to lose her memory. I personally feel it came about as a defense to block out reality because I do not know many more stronger people that my grandmother.

Today is July 6th, 2007. It is my birthday. I’ve made it this far with occasional memories of my early days lost in the lush greenery of interior St. Kitts.  The years have not dissolved my love for that island or the love for my grandmother. This morning before I rose up to realize I just lived another year, momma passed away at age 94.

Each time I hear their names a well of emotion builds up inside of. I was born on neither but they are where my immediate roots originate. My dad is from St. Kitts (also known as St. Christopher) and my mom is from Nevis. Both islands are in the Caribbean and are part of a group of islands collectively known as the Leeward Islands or the Lesser Antilles in the Eastern Caribbean. They also make up one nation - St Kitts and Nevis.  They sit about 200 miles southeast of Puerto Rico.

NOTE: Place mouse over pictures for caption.

St. Kitts, the larger of the two at about 65 square miles, is affectionately called “The Polynesia of the Caribbean” as it gives visitors, familiar with that pacific region, a feel that they are smack dab in the middle of Bora Bora or Tahiti. The native Indians that once roamed its fertile and verdant landscape called it “Liamuiga” which means, “fertile land.” To the British who colonized it for 400 plus years, it was referred to as the “mother colony” being the first British colony in the region, the first of many more to follow.

St. Kitts is shaped like a guitar or a chicken drumstick. On its northwestern end sits a well preserved hilltop fortress known as Brimstone Hill which presents a panoramic view of the wide open Caribbean Sea, Nevis to the southeast and St. Eustatius (”Statia”) to the north.  Brimstone Hill was built by the French who occupied the island at one point (the capital, Bassetterre, a French word, is a reminder of that).  The British later stormed the fort, won a decisive battle and took control of St. Kitts.

Over on it’s fairly uninhabited Peninsula jutting out toward Nevis, one can see one of nature’s little facts on display. With the land area at this area being so narrow, you can stand on  a hill facing Nevis and be able to see both the Atlantic Ocean and Caribbean Sea in one view. What you will notice is that the Atlantic Ocean is rough and restless with constant crashing waves pushed by the famous east to west Trade Winds while the Caribbean Sea is almost at a dead calm.

As a kid, St. Kitts was known for its sugar cane. The land was a rolling carpet of sugar cane fields blending in with the green of other plant life all over the island.  I personally have never seen so many different shades of green on one island. The Indians were clearly right with their descriptive name for the island.

On the Atlantic side going toward the Peninsula is a recent addition to the area, the Marriot Hotel, a beautiful testament to the creativity of the human genius. Large, spacious and relaxing with the total ambiance of the Caribbean.

Sitting just a mere two miles away is Nevis, a name derived from the Spanish word, neives which means “snow.”  Christopher Columbus, upon sailing past the island, looked at its dominant peak (today called “Nevis Peak”) hidden away in a mist of clouds and dubbed it Nuestra Señora de las Nieves or in English, Our Lady of the Snows.” Of course Nevis has never seen snow and probably never will so its name is certainly ironic. The Indians, however, called it Oualie which means, land of beautiful waters and the early British settlers called it  Dulcina (”Sweet Island”).

On the east side of Nevis, you can  see the island of Antigua 50 miles away while from its southeastern end you can see the island of Montserrat and recently, its very active volcano lighting up the night sky.  To the north and northwest St. Kitts can be seen, 2- miles away at the closest point.

Nevis is shaped like fried egg and its landscape is dominated by the 3,000 plus foot mountain Nevis Peak which sits dead center on the island making it visible from every place on the island.  The mountain is relieved of pressure by hot steam rivers that emanates from it.

The Four Seasons Hotel chain has a top class hotel there also.  It has always been a well kept secret for the rich and famous as Nevis is not the first name that comes to mind when tourists think of Caribbean destinations.  The hotel boasts one of the world’s best hotel golf courses, sits at the western foot of Nevis Peak and presents a beautiful view of western St. Kitts.

On one final note, Nevis was the birthplace of Alexander Hamilton the man seen on the U.S $20 bill.

There has been quite a bit of times I have heard in the wake of some school killing or in light of rising school violence that the reason kids on our end of the world (North America) are so violent nowadays is because prayer (god) has been taken out of schools and so on. To people who espouse this type of logic, their line of reasoning goes along the lines that with the removal of god from the schools there has been a direct upswing in school troubles. If this is true, why is it that in countries like Sweden and other northwestern European countries where church and god have been basically placed in a trash bin like yesterday’s trash do we find relatively low crimes rates, prosperity and stability?

While we’re at it, another thing I find interesting is this. Many of us of the black race have grown up in or under the influence of Christianity, a religion that became part of our legacy in great part through slavery and colonialism that was thrust upon our forefathers by former European colonial powers like France, England, Spain, Portugal, The Netherlands and Denmark. Well statistics continue to show that those nations are straying further and further away from taking Christianity seriously, treating it and the church more as a relic even in Italy the seat of the once universally powerful Roman Church. So the former slave masters have practically cut loose of their ties to one of their most powerful tools that helped to justify and reinforce their past crimes on Africans (as well as others) and their descendants yet those they inflicted it upon still cling to it.

For example, in Mexico, a largely Catholic country, colonized by Catholic Spain, only 2-3% of Mexicans do not believe in God (from a 2004 BBC survey) yet in Spain today, 24% of Spaniards consider themselves “atheist” of “agnostic.” It is also not surprising either that you are likely to find more (serious) believers and churchgoers amongst black people in the U.S than white people in the U.S relative to their individual populations.

Food for thought.

A recent newspaper article here in South Florida highlighted an explosion of Caribbean based websites based here in South Florida.  As a native of the Caribbean myself, I find this tremendously encouraging. It is yet another bit of evidence of the increasing visibility and emergence of Caribbean culture in large metropolitan areas.  Already with a similar climate and  surrounding shrubbery, South Florida has been called the “northern Caribbean.”  Broward County, where you would find cities like Ft. Lauderdale, Pompano Beach, Lauderhill, Hollywood, Pembroke Pines and Coral Springs, has become home to the largest Jamaican population in the United States surpassing Brooklyn, New York. Also expected is that Broward will also become home to the largest West Indian population in the United States surpassing Brooklyn, New York.

It’s rather refreshing to walk into local supermarkets and find products I grew up on back in St. Kitts (where I was raised) and St. Thomas (where I was born). It’s nice to see our flags blowing in the breeze at some car lot or dangling on rear view mirrors. Broward’s and Miami’s carnival has the unique position of being the only carnivals outside of the Caribbean that has the similar tropical feel many from the Caribbean remember from home. Tropical climate, tropical surroundings and the beach a few miles east of any location in the Miami or Ft. Lauderdale metropolitan areas.

Anyway, getting back to the websites, the article noted how these websites have become popular not only amongst Caribbean natives living abroad, but also amongst those born abroad to a parent or parents from the Caribbean.   They have helped to breakdown certain barriers that  have sometimes separated Caribbean people. It is not uncommon nowadays to find Jamaicans in Trinidad for Carnival or an Antiguan visiting an island like Dominica. Websites like www.Caribplanet.com has a dynamic success in that it caters to the wider Caribbean and not one particular island. The founder grew up in St. Croix, United States Virgin Islands yet you can find active members from Bermuda to Panama and points in between, all representing Caribbean culture (yes, Panama is part of the Caribbean also). There are active non Caribbean members from Seattle, England and Japan.

It is certainly clear we are a force to reckon with. Politicians are courting us and as of last year, Congress designated the month of June as Caribbean-American Heritage month. So with all of this in mind a popular Jamaican saying would sum it all up. “Wi likkle but we talawa!”

I gave up 15 years of working in corporate America to go on the outside and work as an installer here in South Florida. I install DSL service for the local phone company. I just could not deal with the office politics, boss over the shoulder, trying to stay awake sitting on one place for hours and supervisors expecting me to do work. I was sick and tired of watching ass kissers running around the place laughing at the bosses dry jokes, asking stupid questions in meetings effectively extending the meetings past complete boredom. I was sick of it.

Well now I on the outside. Have no desk to sit at, no bosses over my shoulder, no weekly meetings to attend, no dumb ass jokes to listen to and no retards sitting next to me. Out here it’s just me and the open road which leads me to the homes of some interesting folks. I’ve met them all, but something tells me that might not be final. I’ve met some extremely nasty people (fortunately that have been relatively few), very clean people, hideous looking people, beautiful people, everyday people, celebrities, poor folks, rich folks, women trying to hit on me and men trying to hit on me (yes, I do work in an area with a rather large gay population). Then I’ve had dogs humping my leg, dogs trying to bite my leg, come to face with large hideous iguanas and snakes slithering around backyards.

Then there are the stories. One colleague of mine told me a customer locked him in a downstairs room an told him he could not leave until his DSL was fixed. Another colleague told me that an old lady locked him in her house and told him he could leave unless her computer was up and running. Another installer told me that he went to the house of a male gay customer for an appointment and had to go back a few days later because of a recurring problem. He was pleasantly surprised to enter the home to find the man in a silk robe and a frisky smile on his face. It’s not all bad though. Working on South Beach or Ft. Lauderdale Beach can be rather invigorating, if you know what I mean.

I once had a neighbor who made a living working for a company that installed home theaters for the rich and the famous. He noticed something about them other than their affluence. He told me that by listening to their conversations, they all were trying to outdo the other. In other words, if Jay-Z, for example, installed a $50,000 projector, he would get on the phone to tell his other peers. To go one up, the peers would then seek to purchase something for more money just to say they have a more expensive projector. Poor people like me are more inclined to help other poor folks find deals and ways to save a few precious dollars. For us, it’s all about how much we can save. For the rich it’s all about how much they can spend.

People I don’t know where I got it from, but be it my house or anyone else’s, I just can’t make a whole lot of noise when people are sleeping.

My floors are all tiled and the last thing I would do before I leave home is put on my shoes because I don’t want to walk about with all that tapping and disturbing people. I open my door quietly and I close it quietly. I close the bathroom door when I am brushing my teeth as not to allow the sound of running water to come through too loud. I don’t talk loud to anyone when I know others are still sleeping - I whisper. I try at all cost to not turn on any unnecessary lights and try my best to have all my things prepared from the night before so I dress in my garage where any sound will not be heard and lights not be seen. You won’t hear me reaching for the glass all the way in the back of the cabinet or fumbling through frying pans at 7 in the morning or 14 o’clock at night.

Now people have come to my house and did the opposite of all the above and I have gone to people’s homes who do the same thing. You’re sleeping and they’re carrying on like it’s a soup kitchen, lights on all over the place, in and out the doors opening hard and pulling it in so it could slam, up and down with hard shoes on and rumbling around in the pots and pans cabinet and calling one another from one area of the house all the way across to another. Maybe it’s because I have kids and at that nosey point in their lives, any little sound caused them to pop their heads up because they felt they were missing something important and had to get up and terrorize my ass after that.

Some of us are very well aware that when we call our credit card companies, Internet providers, computer vendors we are often calling overseas. The company I work for has call centers in India, the Phillipines, Costa Rica and I’ve even heard, Jamaica (still trying to confirm this one). This has frustrated customers that I meet on the field who either complain about a communication problem, lack of understanding of their needs or just outright anger at the idea that “American jobs” are going overseas to foreigners in the name of saving money.

Saving money? Well, the multi-billion dollar companies are outsourcing their tech support services and customer services overseas because they can get away with paying what we would consider pocket change to employees over there. Why pay someone in the United States $15 an hour when you can pay someone overseas $15 a week to do the same job?

Well a new wrinkle has been added to this arrangement. Countries like India are now outsourcing the work given to them from “First World” countries to African countries like Kenya where their workers are paid even less than their Indian counterparts. Of course, Kenya was a former British colony like India so English is also spoken and spoken rather well by the more educated class. When all is said and done, the exploitation still ends in Africa.